


Chocolate Chip Cookies

by Arej



Series: Ineffable Advent 2019 [18]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Other, and his carefully organized life discovers a whole new level of chaos, aziraphale has a key to crowley's apartment, crowley learns to bake, i'd even wager on the tag for, in fairness baking is a messy business don't let cooking shows lie to you, they're comfortable enough for that, they're not really male but it's m/m since i used male pronouns throughout, though maybe not THAT messy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:28:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21856060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arej/pseuds/Arej
Summary: Day 18 of the advent calendar of prompts.Crowley has finally settled on the perfect gift for Aziraphale for their first (human style) Christmas.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Ineffable Advent 2019 [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1561027
Comments: 14
Kudos: 126





	Chocolate Chip Cookies

Crowley stands in the center of his normally pristine kitchen and glares daggers at his nemesis. He makes sure to inject as much venom as possible into his voice before threatening, “Do _not_ fuck this up again.”

The oven radiates smug warmth back at him, unimpressed.

“I mean it,” Crowley continues, planting his fists on his hips. It doesn’t work on his plants, but appliances are a different breed; they respond to different posturing, though the threats themselves are rather similar. “One more disaster and I’m replacing you. This batch will be perfect, or it’s the scrap heap for you and a shiny new model in your place.”

He’d awoken this morning with an idea, a solution to the dilemma that’s been plaguing him since Aziraphale first declared he’d found Crowley the perfect gift and no, he wouldn’t tell him and _that would spoil the surprise, do remember we’re having our first human Christmas this year, dear boy_. Crowley, constitutionally incapable of not giving Aziraphale every slightest thing he might possibly want, has been desperately casting about for days for something - anything - he can gift the angel in return.

Reciprocity doesn’t matter, not truly; if they’re keeping score, Crowley is leagues ahead. He has never quite been able to resist showering Aziraphale with gifts - chocolates, opera tickets, books. If it catches Aziraphale’s eye - or Crowley’s, always with the angel on his mind - it’s in his hands soon enough. And it’s not as if the angel would be upset if Crowley showed up on Christmas empty-handed - half his glee over this ‘perfect gift’ centered on the chance to _finally begin to measure up to the depths of your thoughtfulness, dear, if only the slightest bit_.

No, it’s the principle of the thing. Gift-giving has been Crowley’s purview for centuries; he’ll be blessed if he drops the ball their first Christmas. But he won’t now. He has a plan, provided the oven cooperates.

He’s baking cookies.

There is flour scattered over nearly every flat surface of the kitchen, and sprayed across a good number of the cabinet doors, as well. Bits of eggshell - and one entire smashed egg - litter the floor; butter has somehow gotten on the ceiling. An overturned bottle of vanilla extract slowly leaks its contents into a sticky puddle, which spreads along the counter and tips over the edge to drip on the floor.

There is sugar in his hair, dough caked under his fingernails, and a smear of chocolate lining one cheek. His clothes, like his kitchen, are a disaster; enough wasted ingredients are collected in the fibers to bake a batch of (admittedly fuzzy) cookies all their own.

Four dozen cookies of varying degrees of disaster are spread across the counter behind him.

He glares at the oven again. “I mean it.”

“Mean what, dear?”

Crowley nearly joins the butter on the ceiling.

“You weren’t answering the door, so I used the key. I do hope you don’t mind,” Aziraphale continues. He hovers in the doorway, surveying the wrecked kitchen. “Was there…a battle?”

Crowley, thinking of the stand mixer he’d banished from existence for spraying flour everywhere, answers, “Yes.” When Aziraphale lifts a disbelieving brow - baking ingredients are hardly a demon’s preferred weapon, and who even bothers with butter in a fight, anyway - Crowley amends, “Of a sort.”

“I see,” replies the angel, in the precise tone Crowley knows means _I expect you to clarify_.

“I was -” he gestures at the kitchen. Waves his arm to encompass the mess, the pile of dishes in the sink, the snowdrifts of flour on the countertop. “Well. The point is, I won.”

Aziraphale, busy staring at the spot on the wall where a small chocolate explosion has left a rather rudely shaped stain, hums. “Did you?”

“What are you doing here, anyway?”

As a distraction tactic, it’s not ideal, but Aziraphale indulges him. “I was hoping to ask you to lunch. What are _you_ doing?”

Crowley considers a variety of answers: snark, sarcasm, studied ignorance. None of them truly appeal.

“Baking cookies,” he admits, mostly for the exasperated half-smile he gets in return.

“I never knew it was such a messy process.”

“Neither did I.” Crowley scowls at the chaos. “It wasn’t supposed to be _hard_ , either, but -”

“Oh, these look lovely.” Aziraphale has braved the kitchen’s questionable floors to peruse the forty-eight misshapen disasters pretending to be chocolate chip cookies on the counter. He plucks one up and pops it in his mouth even as Crowley lunges to stop him.

“No, angel, they’re not -” He stops mid-reach, heart in his throat and somehow also down around his knees. “- good.”

“Of course they aren’t,” Aziraphale smiles. “They’re spectacular. Truly, Crowley, I never knew you could bake.”

“…I can’t.” Crowley narrows his eyes at the discarded cookies. “I failed.”

“You hardly failed, my dear. They’re delightful.”

“They’re _misshapen_.”

Aziraphale reaches for another mockery of a baked good. He gestures with the cookie - truly horrifying, with uneven chocolate chip distribution and a lumpy left side. “They’re homemade.”

“They’re a _disgrace_.”

“Well they _taste_ delicious. What’s the occasion, anyway?” the angel asks, as much of a poor distraction as Crowley’s earlier abrupt change of topic. Crowley indulges him in turn.

“Christmas,” he replies, eyes resolutely on his failures - no, the _oven’s_ failures, they were perfect when he - “Oh, _fuck_ -”

When he takes the pan from the oven to see yet another dozen imperfect golden brown cookies, he scowls. The hot pan clatters to the counter as he kicks the offending oven door shut, slams the dials off. It’s a ridiculous display of temper, but it’s that or cry, and crying over misshapen baked goods is a level of embarrassment he’s not ready for.

“Christmas cookies?” Aziraphale prompts from behind him, and Crowley huffs a laugh.

“I don’t think Christmas cookies are traditionally chocolate chip. They were supposed to be your gift, but -” He gestures at the disappointments strewn across the countertop in explanation. Aziraphale’s face falls dramatically, and Crowley’s radar for angel fussing pings in alarm.

“Oh, I’ve spoiled the surprise.” He drops the cookie in his hand to press crumb-dotted fingers to his mouth. “I do apologize, my dear, I didn’t realize -”

“What? No.” Crowley swats the apology away. “No, they’re not _good enough_ , they have to be -”

He stops, but too late; Aziraphale is blinking at him, face gone soft in surprise. There is a mistiness to his eyes and a curve to his mouth that promises trouble for Crowley’s heart.

“- perfect,” he finishes helplessly.

“Oh, my love.” And there it is; Crowley’s heart, as it always does when Aziraphale uses that particular endearment, goes embarrassingly gooey. “They _are_ perfect.”

“No,” Crowley argues, but it’s hard to be firm when his heart is doing its best to emulate the vanilla extract puddle seeping across the floor.

“Yes,” Aziraphale argues back, moving around the counter to pull an unresisting Crowley close. “They’re perfect.”

“Hmph,” Crowley manages from where he’s buried his face in Aziraphale’s neck. The need to argue is draining from him as he luxuriates in the feel of the angel wrapped around him, warm and close and _here_ , the way he’d barely dared dream before the world failed to end properly. That he gets to have this, now, makes petty things like being right about the state of his baked goods fade into unimportance. They get to have _this_.

It’s new, this thing they have; it’s new, and it’s old, and it’s magic. It’s _theirs_.

It’s perfect.

“You’re perfect,” Aziraphale murmurs into Crowley’s hair, and chuckles when the demon presses closer with a perfunctory noise of protest. “We’re perfect,” he adds, as if reading Crowley’s mind, and this time, the noise that drifts from the warm curve of his neck is agreement. They stand that way for hours, long past time for lunch, wrapped in each other and basking in it.

Crowley still banishes the oven to the scrap heap, though. Even if, immediately after, Aziraphale miracles it back. That’s fine; the angel can be the soft one. He is, usually.

But it’s important for the appliances to know Crowley makes good on his threats, for next time.


End file.
